I’ve had it..

06Sep06

So it seems that if you’re in the top 30 users on digg, you open yourself up to a world of criticism and ridicule. I’m thoroughly disheartened and a bit pissed off at what is going on over there and here but that’s perhaps only because I feel as if I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into digg.

I haven’t done it for the glory. I haven’t done it for the fame. I haven’t done it for anything other than I simply liked feeling part of something like digg. But now, things have changed (again) for me. I’m being accused of being part of a digg “circle jerk”:

And second, I’m thinking the reason they haven’t ever published the algorithm is to keep people like gregd and those in his circle-jerk club from being able to work the system. If they *are* this concerned with keeping people from taking advantage of the system, why aren’t they doing anything to stop it?

What I’m apparently supposed to stop from happening is other users automatically digging stories that people on their friends list submit. Wait a minute! I’m supposed to tell other users how to use digg according to me? What kind of bullshit is that? As long as you aren’t violating their TOS, digg is what you make it. The person that accused me of being in this “circle jerk” dclowd9901, hasn’t even taken the time to check what I’ve dugg and what I haven’t dugg before throwing around his accusations. I believe it’s simply that I’m in the top 30, so I must be part of this big conspiracy:

nobody asks you to wake up early and start burning through articles to submit to the homepage. That is your choice, and if that brings you to the top and makes you an easier target for this issue, then that’s something you’ve been risking all along. Frankly, I’d be pretty happy if the lot of you took a damn day off, just to see how it goes.

So now his logic follows that if I use digg for, what I think to be, it’s intended purpose, I’ve somehow got it coming? Fuck that. This shit pisses me off to no end and it’s exactly why I quit doing diggfan.com. I didn’t say anyone asked me to logon to digg at 5AM. I get up early specifically to logon to digg and post what I think are some cool stories. So he’d be pretty happy if I stopped contributing to digg just to see how it goes? Whatever….

These very same people who are complaining about the “digg elite” and their apparent digging of each others stories are calling for banding together to immediately bury any of the “digg elite” submissions. Well pardon the fuck out of me, but aren’t you then doing exactly what it is you’re complaining about? Are these the same people that cried “traitors” when BloodJunkie and Wayjer left for Netscape? At least now they’re getting paid for the abuse…

I get told all the time that people bury my comments and my submissions, simply because it comes from me. Huh? I guess that’s your prerogative but it seems a bit silly to bury a submission not based on it’s quality, but rather it’s submitter.

All in all, I’m just extremely frustrated at being lumped into some lame category simply because I’m a top 30 user. If that comes with the territory, then I either have to grow thicker skin or get the fuck out of digg altogether. I don’t make digg what it is anymore or less than what the other top 30 folks do. There are over 500,000 registered users on digg and each and everyone has the ability to make digg what they want it to be, whether it’s to band together and eliminate the “digg elite” or start submitting your own quality posts to FP (front page).

Edited to add:

My friend P9 (p9s50W5k4GUD2c6) (who happens to be the number one user on digg at the moment) has this to say:

Dear Mr. Rose: So all of a sudden, my use of the BUILT-IN functionality of Digg amounts to gaming?

I ignored Digg’s ice-cold level of support during the Netscape transition. Instead I stayed with Digg – for nothing.
I ignored Jay’s jack-ass condescending T-Shirt comment.
I ignored the misbegotten algorithm you all put in place shortly after that that made it MISERABLY hard for any user to get to the front page (which is a big factor in this whole issue)
I overlooked all the red ink about I/we were FOOLS to digg so hard for you – the 60 Million Dollar Man.
I overlooked the Trademark fiasco and the treatment of Digg’s users
I overlooked this: http://digg.com/music/EMI_in_free_music_downloads_deal and
But I will NOT overlook your tacit equation of BUSTING MY ASS for Digg with gaming.

As a direct result of your blog this evening. I will no longer no supporting Digg going forward. I bequeath my measly number one position to whoever wants to reign.

And for all of you that do nothing but bitch about your being PREVENTED from getting your stories dugg – here’s your chance! Now YOU can spend all the time, all the effort and get stabbed in the back by fellow Diggers (aptly named) and then tossed to the side by a Digg team that values toilet paper with more worth than the core users that feed this site it’s content every day.

I believe you to be a good man, Kevin. Well intentioned or not: your blog satisfied malcontents equipped with baseless allegations while you effectively urinated on your top diggers (correction: top gamers). I wish you well. I will be turning over the Digg Users Support Group to someone else.

To my many friends – I will miss you.
P9

Sadly, I’m at that point too…..

Updated again to add:

This is apparently catching on in the blogosphere with some of the major folks carrying it. Techcrunch has a nice write up about it,

Dude — it is sad that p9 felt he had to go. It must be hard to feel that all of your hard work has come to this.

My own feelings are that the top20 or whatever, do what they do — and its the same that what everyone else does. People are now voting on bloc against you fellas as “lame” or whatever out of sheer spite now — and probably out of a misunderstanding of what is really going on.

The system promotes voting en block — that’s why there’s a friend system, and a way to see what your friends are digging.

The algorithm also promotes the rewarding of hard work — that’s why top20 diggers submissions mean more and probably get sent to the front page more often (with less Diggs).

The problem is that the “friends” system + the “algorithm” leads to a higher percentage of stories hitting the FP — all things being equal, the stories being equal and so on.

For example, the latest story by EMI on the BBC dugg by p9. That’s old. Real old. I think I even posted something on it like 4-5 days ago. But, any normal user would have never gotten the kind of exposure that p9 gets.

Anyway, I think its wrong to begrudge the top20 from using the system that’s there. Lots of diggers do what the top20 do … they just don’t happen to be the top20.

Hopefully KRO will be able to manage this from a system point of view, while preserving the ‘friends’ phenomena to a degree.

It would suck (capital S) to loose the parts of the community that have driven Digg to its success (such as you and p9).

Anyway … thought I would drop a thought or three.
Cheers an keep up the good work.
tony @ dji

Greg, don’t let them get to you. They attacks and ridicule us for one simple reason, they’re jealous of our success.

They don’t understand two things in this whole ordeal:

1)Digg is a SOCIAL (social, social social) bookmarking website. That’s right, did I say social? Yes! The point is to make friends and digg their content and visa versa. It saddens me that the people completely forget this because of who is digging my story.

2)We made the top list because of hard work and dedication. When it was said we could be replaced by any number of Digg users if we left, they were wrong, dead wrong. Yes, I will mention that there are a good number of new, great content submitters that have shown up in the top 100 in the past few months.

So, the question you have to ask yourself is, Why am I a top digger in the first place? The answer? Because you submit content. Simple as that. Most people on the top list (for homepage stories) are also on the top list for submissions. That’s because we spend our time submitting content to the site and made some friends along the way. Hell, I remember I had just 5 friends up until a little while ago. You, Tysony, and a couple people from my school. That was enough for me to make it into the top 50 users. Then I made more friends, talking and conversing with most of them before I decided “Hey, this is a cool guy” and add them.

So, what am I rambling on about? Just don’t let it get to you greg. What you do is a service, what you do is great, what they do. . . it’s just ****ing retarded bickering.

In another note, what kevin and the boys are doing to digg is just a ploy to get people’s attention away from us as “top diggers”. This is good in my mind, as just saying we are top submitters won’t give the crowds reason to cry.

GregD I’ve seen your comments (and a couple of your submissions) before and I’m sorry you feel the whole “diggnation” is against you. We’re not. Is there issues at Digg? Yea, but that’s why they are constantly tweaking it, and I think the reason krose spoke up and posted on the blog. To take critisism away from those that didn’t deserve it like you (and I guess P9, but I don’t catch his activity.)

So I say let it run it’s course. See how the new code works and see if the critisism drops off. It shouldn’t effect you since you tend to digg different subjects and not just posts of one friend, which is what the complaints are about.

What I don’t get is if what they say is true, that the stories are only being Dugg by friends, not because they are good stories then why when they hit the frontpage that they get hundreds to thousands of Diggs. These people must be digging them because they are good stories. I might get a max of about 10 friends digging my stories but that’s a long way off from the frontpage. The reason we get stories on the frontpage is because were up early catching the stories when they first come out. I to am on at 6:00am and see the other top diggers on as well. I might be only rated 56 but I’m not crying, It just tells me the rest of you are putting in more time and effort. Kevin needs to setup a algorithm that will weed out the cry babies.

This is an inaccurate interpretation. Leaving Digg strikes me as an impulsive and irrational reaction. No one at Digg was blaming the hard work of the top 20 users. Rather, the effect of small population of users who digg the top poster’s stories *out of habit* needed to be counteracted. Therefore, Kevin and Digg team changed the algorithm to increase the promotion score based on the diversity of the diggers. That’s all. Nothing more. None of the top folks at Digg did anything to disrespect you or P9. (Other digg users, like dclowd9901, need to be more polite of course. But to be successful in any endeavour you must shrug off criticism from envious, anonymous, unknown bottom-feeders.)

Now you seem to indicate that you will be leaving Digg like P9? I’m positive you will soon regret this decision as you clearly have a strong emotional attachment to the site. That attachment shouldn’t be so easily disregarded for a perceived insult which never actually took place. Digg is a big and important site, and you were an appreciable part of it. When you leave you are no longer making a signficant contribution and will no longer have notoriety (though Digg will continue to increase in success and importance.) If you come back, you may be considered a hypocrite and attention monger for the tirade you posted. I do not see an easy solution for you considering the events to date – you probably should of just slept on it a little longer.

My frustration stems from more than a few “bottom-feeders”. The following are actual quotes about my involvement in digg.

“You are guilty, and you are rigging. The top users digg your stories, that’s why you are on the top 30. I bet you digg their stories too.If I had more free time I’d be glad to bury all your stories.You guys got up there because the top users auto-digging their friends much faster than they could possibly read the stories. And, because of flaws in the system, somebody auto-burying all your stories doesn’t have as much weight because their influence hasn’t been magnified by the fraud of the top users.It should be like the netscape guy says, one user, one vote, and with a delay so the vote only counts if they had time to read the story.”

The above person will likely automatically bury my submissions.

“Stop you crying, you sorry punk.”

Yet another “bottom-feeder”?

“Please leave digg. You and your circle-jerk gamers have made digg a worse site than it used to be. Digg will be a better website without you people. kkthxbye.”

They’re wrong though. The people in the top50 submit far more content than the people below that line. The amount of content on Digg won’t be as great without the people who spend their days submitting all day long.

I agree with Jeremiah, and the digg homepage stories have seemed to slow since this craziness has begun. I wish everyone would just bury comments related to this event or at least ignore them.

At any rate I think it is funny that I added P9 as a friend without the slightest knowledge that it was the #1 user. I probably liked some random comment and I know I thought the user name was really interesting. That’s it.

After that I was more inclined to digg P9 stories… sure I wish my stories would get more diggs, but that doesn’t mean I need to revile those at the top of the ranking.

I think they need a gold members club, where you get a special star or something in your profile but are retired from the normal ranking. You get your warm fuzzy and can continue to contribute, but you’re pulled out of the normal “I’m #1” fight.